Each year, millions of women around the world reach the age of menopause—that pivotal feminine threshold when the menstrual cycles cease. While many of these women are able to breeze through this time of transition with little more than a few hot flashes and maybe an episode or two of moodiness, for some women it can be far more challenging. According to recent statistics, 15 to 20 percent of women going through The Change experience such intense physical and emotional upheaval that their lives come to a complete standstill, leaving many with the overwhelming fear that they are losing their minds. Lynda Wisdo was one of these women.

“Still don’t know what’s happening in my brain…am I dying? Am I going crazy…Or do I have a menopause psychosis? Or perhaps a psychosis related to all of my childhood trauma?”

In this powerful memoir, Lynda describes her months-long descent into what appeared to be some sort of menopausal “madness,” a madness that, in time, proved to be not the end of her sanity but the means by which she would finally come to reclaim it.

The depth and honesty of Lynda's struggle shows the transformation possible when we engage with our process. She visits helplessness and hopelessness and comes to find that there can be meaning here, meaning that it is so rewarding to engage with and blossom from.

Lynda's focus is the transformation possible during the menopause: she shows that the female cycle gives us an opportunity to heal each month and that some months might be really hard, but instead of being victim, we can engage consciously to turn things around.

This particular journey could be transferred to other periods of growth and change within the human experience, no matter how bad, how challenging, we can end up managing our life again and in this way this account of one woman's journey can help others to develop meaning and insight.

*Earlier edition published as Menopause in Crisis--The Summer I Lost My Mindby Lynda Wyzda (pen name)